


the long way home

by blanxkey



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Road Trip, birthday fic (from last year)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25199671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanxkey/pseuds/blanxkey
Summary: lucas turns seventeen on the road.
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44





	the long way home

**Author's Note:**

> my first fic for skamfr. i wrote this last year for our baby gremlin's birthday. posting it here now just because.
> 
> enjoy.

he doesn’t know why he proposes the idea in the first place.

except that when lucas wakes up one morning, flushed warm and sticky from sweating all night, his days withering and uncomfortable and fucking melting beneath a scorching july sun, he decides that he’s had enough. there’s heat dripping from every crevice of his bedroom walls, the room washed bright in the morning light — the boy above him traces soft, languid fingers over his naked back — and lucas blames it for the way his skin sings with the barest of touches.

when lucas feels the press of eliott’s lips to his spine, he shifts so he’s laying on his back. eliott hovers over him, balanced onto his elbows. his mouth forms the beginning of a lazy smile, eyes following a little too closely, “morning.” his voice is rough. honeyed.

“let’s get away,” the syllables slip out, sleep induced and sort of bleary. “i don’t want to spend another day in this hell hole.”

eliott hums when he kisses the top of lucas’ nose, then moves back to straddle his waist. lucas rest his hands on eliott’s thighs, strokes up, and down, and over each brush of morning light. appraisal catches eliott’s eyes – they’re so grey at this hour, grey like a sky kindling thunderclouds or lightning storms. “and where would we go?” eliott considers, if only to humor him, but he doesn’t laugh. something curls low in lucas’ belly, a sharp tug of impulse that turns giddily in his blood.

shrugging is vain, but he tries his best, says, “somewhere — anywhere, it doesn’t matter — we’ll think of something.”

eliott smiles fondly, briefly, before he’s kissing him. his kisses are tender, quite noises and gentle hands, and lucas will always melt in his hands. his heart takes on a messy beat. an incessant rhythm of _eliott, eliott, eliott_.

outside, the chirping gets louder as paris comes slowly to life.

///

(recklessness is dangerous, like polished darkness. a spider’s web, fusing in the place where clear and broken meet. but sense fails, sometimes, falters when eliott says they’re still young. palms over his eyes, he leads lucas to the convertible parked just outside, dusty and hibernating. _my uncle’s_. eliott had just received his license, he only had to ask, and lucas would always go.)

///

they keep on chasing the asphalt even when the sun drips low on their backs, lucas likes that they never stay too long at one place, always moving, like the paths they follow. there are two bags of clothes hastily prepared, a motel, two, then three, and the distinction blurs. all of lucas’ shirts smell like eliott. hands draped over the steering wheel, pink blooming on his cheeks, eliott develops a liking to lucas’ snapback. when he grins at lucas behind his aviators, he looks like he belongs.

it’s an empty road, unwinding before lucas’ eyes, never looping, that sees the sun on lucas’ seventeenth.

seventeen. a number suspended between young and old, neither here nor there. if lucas thinks hard, he won’t remember how he got here, only that he’s glad eliott’s there with him. eliott, who’s drumming his fingers against the wheel. he doesn’t look over when he asks “wouldn’t you rather be anywhere else right now?”

lucas frowns. “like where?” he doesn’t know where they’re headed; the road atlas lies forgotten on the console. he just keeps watching as the sun casts faint shadows of eliott’s eyelashes over his cheekbones.

“i don’t know…like home.”

“no —” lucas answers quick, final. he looks out the window, at the lush green trees lining one side of the road, towering like skyscrapers under the bright sunlight. he thinks about how, when he was young and confined to the four walls of his parent’s room, the world stretched vast and mysterious, foreboding outside the comfort of his own home. in his dreams, it grew darker the longer he walked, and he feared that if he walked too far, he’ll never find a way back home.

now, eliott feels like an antithesis of those dreams, or a whisper of a new dream. a dream that he no longer fears, or represses, a dream he sees through open eyes. eliott changes lanes and the engine hums, the wind ruffles their hair and lucas watches deep grass field zooming by in the rear view mirror, but the doesn’t look back. he doesn’t have to. today, this minute, right now— “i am home.”

///

impromptu stops punctuate their journey, five minutes at tesco, ten at a gas station, thirty when they stop to have lunch at an Italian diner where the lady serving them keeps pinching eliott’s cheeks. it’s endearing to watch, the way a shy smile breaks across his face every time it happens.

when it feels like they’ve driven too far, eliott pulls over to the side of the road. he’s taken them somewhere, at last.

“come on,” eliott prompts, stepping out of the car. “always wanted to show you this.”

and lucas goes. he follows eliott to a sunset of fiery color, to erupting hues of orange and dusky purple above, and pure, pure gold in front of him.

for a moment he feels transfixed, unable to move. the fields widen before him, on and on, until they meet the horizon. beige and sun-scorched sunflower stalks bend in the wind, the flowers sway gently atop, grasshoppers chirping somewhere among them. time comes to a standstill here, and he drinks in the stillness of it all, breathes until his lungs fill up with the wispy aura of high summer.

the world resumes again when eliott comes into his peripheral, holding a basket that lucas remembers they definitely didn’t have.

“where did you get that from?” lucas asks as eliott leads them ahead. he finds a clear spot just at the mouth, and starts unloading the basket, explaining as he does: “the lady at the diner prepared it for us. i only asked for some snacks for the road, but she insisted on the basket as well.”

lucas sits down next to him, his voice is full of mirth when he exclaims, “oh, so i was right! she did like you too much.”

“shut up.” and whether it’s the last bit of sunlight playing with eliott’s cheeks or the tint of an actual blush, lucas doesn’t know.

eliott lays out sandwiches and crisps, chocolates and rice cakes. there’s lukewarm beer for lucas, coke for eliott. lucas unwraps a sandwich, gazes at eliott as he does the same, and doesn’t feel ashamed in watching him eat.

“i know the cake’s missing,” eliott looks away when he catches his eyes. “but i’ll make it up to you, i promise.”

the way he looks right now, the way he carefully avoids lucas’ gaze, occupying himself with observing their surrounding instead, makes lucas’ heart race. he feels stupid, guilty even, for not voicing his gratitude before. for making eliott think he would want anything else, more. but still the words don’t come.

“it’s okay,” lucas hides behind his beer, it’s all he can say. “i know you will.”

they make use of their phones’ flashlights when the light fades to a dull grey. “do you come here often?” he asks after some time, when eliott has finished his coke.

eliott shakes his head. his eyes roam around them, turn somewhat wistful, like he’s remembering something. “only when i was young,” he swallows before continuing, “when dad wasn’t working or mom craved a drive, this is where we ended up.”

lucas observes the giant stalks, like if he searches hard enough, he can find the ghosts of eliott’s memories floating about. he can feel himself smiling at that, trying to imagine little eliott running through the field, screaming, laughing, complaining— “isn’t this a bit far?”

“it never was. not for me, at least,” eliott affirms, and then he winks. it’s hard to catch under the fading light. “i was always eager to return, to catch a glimpse of those wild animals people talked about.”

“is that why you brought me here? to feed me to your beast friends?” lucas gasps, affronted.

that squeezes a laugh out of him, loud and booming. eliott’s carefree under the fading light, pretty in the way that catches his eye. that whispers to him like the call of sleep. lucas keeps the moment close. “beast friends, god…” he wipes at his eyes, heaves out a sigh afterwards.

“yes, actually that was at the top of my bucket list,” he leans in to whisper conversationally, when he’s calmed down enough.

the prospect of feral animals living right here is, admittedly, terrifying, but he knows eliott wouldn’t take him somewhere dangerous, unsafe. so he lets it go, focuses instead on the next pressing matter. “what bucket list? why am i now hearing of a bucket list?”

“because i’m secretive and mysterious,” eliott says, puffing out his chest.

lucas scoffs. “or because you’re just making it up as you go.”

there’s a pinch to lucas’ side. “hey!” he throws his hand over eliott’s shoulders, but he pivots, and pushes, and they end up falling backwards, lucas on the ground, eliott on top of him. the tiny gossamer strands of grass tickle his backside through the thin tank top, but the weight of eliott is comfortable above him.

“why,” eliott mumbles, and it sounds like he’s pouting, “is your humour always on my expense?”

lucas leans forward, presses his lips to eliott’s nose. “you love it, demaury.”

there are hands on his sides, fingers gripping the material of his shirt, and then there are soft lips on his. eliott licks into lucas’ mouth; he tastes faintly of chocolate. he holds lucas close when he kisses him, like lucas is the air he breathes, like lucas is the sun, the moon and all his stars. it makes lucas’ heart beat clumsily out of pace. he isn’t sure he can live under this effect for long.

when they part, a tiny smile is tugging eliott’s lips up. it widens when he sees lucas’ answering grin. pupils glimmering from the ever-widening bands of moonlight, eliott hoists them upwards.

“maybe i just won’t make it up for the cake, then.”

lucas’ eyes roll on their own. “you’re something else, entirely.”

“you love it, lallemant.”

///

later, after night drapes over the world in a glimmering sheet of navy, on and on they go. the tires crunch over gravel, throwing off sand and dust. lucas feels so full, feels like his heart could burst any moment right now. there aren’t enough words to explain how he feels, but he tries his best.

“thank you for today, eliott. it was beautiful, really,” it comes out meek, silent over the changing notes from the radio, but eliott hears him anyway. he glances at lucas, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles bashfully. faint moonlight silver breaks through the window by his side, colors his skin in soft graphite.

he turns back to the road. lucas keeps watching. “we need to find a place to stay, for now,” he announces, smile still in place, messes with the radio dial. “here,” he passes over the road atlas to lucas, “find us a motel, and tomorrow i’ll take you somewhere more beautiful.”

promises, promises.

“oh? another task on your bucket list?”

“uh uh, right alongside finding our tunnel song.”

lucas smiles. he traces a path on the map, then another, fingers passing over where they are now and where they had been to where they will be. an elaborate pattern, obscured by several memories lining the trail. but it doesn’t matter — it’s eliott he’s talking about, of course he would find a way back home.

(for now, though, lucas leans in his seat as moon river croons softly through the radio, and the cadence of sleep calls to him. he closes his eyes for a moment, just to feel earthed somehow. seventeen, he thinks, a number that feels like falling, and flying, and love – warm, warm, warm)

and eliott – he drives them further into the moonlit night.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading. comments and kudos make me immensely happy. if you want, you can drop me a prompt or two on tumblr ( [@blanxkey ](https://blanxkey.tumblr.com/ask)).


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